Multi-Mode Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing Transmitter for Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications

ABSTRACT

A transmitter may comprise a symbol mapper circuit and operate in at least two modes. In a first mode, the number of symbols output by the mapper circuit per orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol transmitted by said transmitter may be greater than the number of data-carrying subcarriers used to transmit the OFDM symbol. In a second mode, the number of symbols output by said mapper circuit per orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol transmitted by said transmitter is less than or equal to the number of data-carrying subcarriers used to transmit said OFDM symbol. The symbols output by the symbol mapper circuit may be N-QAM symbols. While the circuitry operates in the first mode, the symbols output by the mapper may be converted to physical subcarrier values via filtering and decimation prior to being input to an IFFT circuit.

CLAIM OF PRIORITY

This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No.14/479,428 filed Sep. 8, 2014, which is a continuation of U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/921,749 filed Jun. 19, 2013 (now patented asU.S. Pat. No. 8,831,124) which makes reference to, claims priority toand claims benefit from:

U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/662,085 entitled“Apparatus and Method for Efficient Utilization of Bandwidth” and filedon Jun. 20, 2012, now expired;U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/726,099 entitled“Modulation Scheme Based on Partial Response” and filed on Nov. 14,2012, now expired;U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/729,774 entitled“Modulation Scheme Based on Partial Response” and filed on Nov. 26,2012, now expired;U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/747,132 entitled“Modulation Scheme Based on Partial Response” and filed on Dec. 28,2012, now expired;U.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/768,532 entitled “HighSpectral Efficiency over Non-Linear, AWGN Channels” and filed on Feb.24, 2013, now expired; andU.S. Provisional Patent Application Ser. No. 61/807,813 entitled “HighSpectral Efficiency over Non-Linear, AWGN Channels” and filed on Apr. 3,2013, now expired.

Each of the above applications is hereby incorporated herein byreference in its entirety.

INCORPORATIONS BY REFERENCE

This patent application makes reference to:

U.S. Pat. No. 8,582,637 titled “Low-Complexity,Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,998 titled “Design andOptimization of Partial Response Pulse Shape Filter,” and filed on Jan.31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,675,769 titled “Constellation Map Optimization forHighly Spectrally Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,571,131 titled “Dynamic Filter Adjustment forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,559,494 titled “Timing Synchronization for Reception ofHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,559,496 titled “Signal Reception UsingNon-Linearity-Compensated, Partial Response Feedback,” and filed on Jan.31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,599,914 titled “Feed Forward Equalization forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,665,941 titled “Decision Feedback Equalizer for HighlySpectrally Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/755,025 titled “Decision FeedbackEqualizer with Multiple Cores for Highly-Spectrally-EfficientCommunications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,559,498 titled “Decision Feedback Equalizer UtilizingSymbol Error Rate Biased Adaptation Function for Highly SpectrallyEfficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,548,097 titled “Coarse Phase Estimation forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,565,363 titled “Fine Phase Estimation for HighlySpectrally Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,744,003 titled “Multi-Mode Transmitter forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,605,832 titled “Joint Sequence Estimation of Symbol andPhase With High Tolerance Of Nonlinearity,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,553,821 titled “Adaptive Non-Linear Model forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,824,599 titled “Pilot Symbol-Aided Sequence Estimationfor Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31,2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,571,146 titled “Method and System for Corrupt SymbolHandling for Providing High Reliability Sequences,” and filed on Jan.31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,566,687 titled “Method and System for Forward ErrorCorrection Decoding with Parity Check for Use in Low ComplexityHighly-spectrally-efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/755,061 (attorney docket no.26174US02), titled “Method and System for Quality of Service (QoS)Awareness in a Single Channel Communication System,” and filed on Jan.31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,665,992, titled “Pilot Symbol Generation forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,548,072, titled “Timing Pilot Generation forHighly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/756,010 (attorney docket no.26469US02), titled “Multi-Mode Receiver for Highly-Spectrally-EfficientCommunications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,572,458, titled “Forward Error Correction with ParityCheck Encoding for use in Low Complexity Highly-spectrally-efficientCommunications,” and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,526,523, titled “Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Receiver,”and filed on Jan. 31, 2013;U.S. Pat. No. 8,781,008, titled “Highly-Spectrally-EfficientTransmission Using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing,” andfiled on the same date as this application;U.S. Pat. No. 8,737,458, titled “Highly-Spectrally-Efficient ReceptionUsing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing,” and filed on the samedate as this application; andU.S. Pat. No. 8,681,889, titled “Multi-Mode Orthogonal FrequencyDivision Multiplexing Receiver for Highly-Spectrally-EfficientCommunications,” and filed on the same date as this application.

Each of the above applications is hereby incorporated herein byreference in its entirety.

TECHNICAL FIELD

Aspects of the present application relate to electronic communications.

BACKGROUND

Existing communications methods and systems are overly power hungryand/or spectrally inefficient. Further limitations and disadvantages ofconventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one ofskill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with someaspects of the present method and system set forth in the remainder ofthis disclosure with reference to the drawings.

BRIEF SUMMARY

Methods and systems are provided for a multi-mode transmitter forhighly-spectrally-efficient communications using orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing, substantially as illustrated by and/or describedin connection with at least one of the figures, as set forth morecompletely in the claims.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1A is a diagram of an example OFDM transmitter.

FIG. 1B depicts simulation results of an example cyclic filter for ahighly-spectrally-efficient OFDM transmitter.

FIG. 1C depicts a flowchart describing operation of an exampleimplementation of a highly-spectrally-efficient OFDM transmitter.

FIG. 1D depicts a first example of a multi-mode OFDM transmitter.

FIG. 1E depicts a second example of a multi-mode OFDM transmitter.

FIG. 1F depicts an example process for configuration of a multi-modeOFDM transmitter.

FIG. 2A is a diagram of an example OFDM receiver.

FIGS. 2B and 2C depict a flowchart describing operation of an exampleimplementation of a highly-spectrally-efficient OFDM receiver.

FIG. 2D depicts a flowchart describing operation of an example decodingcircuit of a highly-spectrally-efficient OFDM receiver.

FIG. 3A depicts a first example of a multi-mode OFDM receiver.

FIG. 3B depicts a second example of a multi-mode OFDM receiver.

FIG. 3C depicts an example process for configuration of a multi-modeOFDM transmitter.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart describing a process for mitigating the effects offrequency-selective fading in a multi-mode communication system.

FIG. 5 is a diagram of an example network in which aspects of thisdisclosure are in use.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

As utilized herein the terms “circuits” and “circuitry” refer tophysical electronic components (i.e. hardware) and any software and/orfirmware (“code”) which may configure the hardware, be executed by thehardware, and or otherwise be associated with the hardware. As usedherein, for example, a particular processor and memory may comprise afirst “circuit” when executing a first one or more lines of code and maycomprise a second “circuit” when executing a second one or more lines ofcode. As utilized herein, “and/or” means any one or more of the items inthe list joined by “and/or”. As an example, “x and/or y” means anyelement of the three-element set {(x), (y), (x, y)}. As another example,“x, y, and/or z” means any element of the seven-element set {(x), (y),(z), (x, y), (x, z), (y, z), (x, y, z)}. As utilized herein, the term“exemplary” means serving as a non-limiting example, instance, orillustration. As utilized herein, the terms “e.g.,” and “for example”set off lists of one or more non-limiting examples, instances, orillustrations. As utilized herein, circuitry is “operable” to perform afunction whenever the circuitry comprises the necessary hardware andcode (if any is necessary) to perform the function, regardless ofwhether performance of the function is disabled, or not enabled, by someuser-configurable setting.

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has gained traction inrecent years in high-capacity wireless and wireline communicationsystems such as WiFi (IEEE Std 802.11n/ac), 3GPP-LTE, and G.hn. Oneadvantage of OFDM is that it can reduce the need for complicatedequalization over frequency selective channels. It is particularlypowerful in combination with multiple independent spatial streams andmultiple antennas, Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems. Oneadvantage of OFDM is that it can reduce or eliminate the need forcomplicated equalization over frequency selective channels. ConventionalMIMO-OFDM solutions are based on suboptimal Zero Forcing, SIC(Successive Interference Cancellation), and minimum mean square error(MMSE) receivers. These detection algorithms are significantly inferiorto maximum likelihood (ML) and near-ML receivers. Lately, in emergingstandards, constellation size continues to increase (256-QAM, 1024-QAM,and so on). The associated ML state space of such solutions is N^(SS),where N and SS stand for the constellation size and total number of MIMOspatial streams, respectively. Consequently, aspects of this disclosurepertain to reduced state/complexity ML decoders that achieve highperformance.

Example implementations of the present disclosure may use relativelysmall constellations with partial response signaling that occupiesaround half the bandwidth of “ISI-free” or “full response” signaling.Thus, the ML state space is reduced significantly and cost effectivenessof reduced complexity ML detection is correspondingly improved.Additionally, aspects of this disclosure support detection in thepresence of phase noise and non-linear distortion without the need ofpilot symbols that reduce capacity and spectral efficiency. The spectralcompression also provides multidimensional signal representation thatimproves performance in an AWGN environment as compared to conventionaltwo-dimensional QAM systems. In accordance with an implementation ofthis disclosure, transmitter shaping filtering may be applied in thefrequency domain in order to preserve the independency of the OFDMsymbols.

FIG. 1A is a diagram of an example OFDM transmitter. The exampletransmitter 100 comprises a symbol mapper circuit 102, an inter-symbolcorrelation (ISC) generation circuit 104, a decimation circuit 108, aserial-to-parallel circuit 110, an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT)circuit 112, a parallel-to-serial circuit 114, a cyclic prefix andwindowing circuit 116, and a transmit front-end circuit 118. In theexample implementation shown, the transmitter transmits into a channel120.

The symbol mapper circuit 102, may be operable to map, according to aselected modulation scheme, bits of a bitstream to be transmitted(“Tx_bitstream”) to symbols. For example, for a quadrature amplitudemodulation (QAM) scheme having a symbol alphabet of N (N-QAM), themapper may map each Log₂(N) bits of the Tx_bitstream to a single symbolrepresented as a complex number and/or as in-phase (I) andquadrature-phase (Q) components. Although N-QAM is used for illustrationin this disclosure, aspects of this disclosure are applicable to anymodulation scheme (e.g., pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), amplitudeshift keying (ASK), phase shift keying (PSK), frequency shift keying(FSK), etc.). Additionally, points of the N-QAM constellation may beregularly spaced (“on-grid”) or irregularly spaced (“off-grid”).Furthermore, the symbol constellation used by the mapper 102 may beoptimized for best bit-error rate (BER) performance (or adjusted toachieve a target BER) that is related to log-likelihood ratio (LLR) andto optimizing mean mutual information bit (MMIB) (or achieving a targetMMIB). The Tx_bitstream may, for example, be the result of bits of datapassing through a forward error correction (FEC) encoder and/or aninterleaver. Additionally, or alternatively, the symbols out of themapper 102 may pass through an interleaver.

The ISC generation circuit 104 may be operable to filter the symbolsoutput by the mapper 102 to generate C′ virtual subcarrier values (theterminology “virtual subcarrier” is explained below) having asignificant, controlled amount of inter-symbol correlation among symbolsto be output on different subcarriers (i.e., any particular one of theC′ virtual subcarrier values may be correlated with a plurality of theC′ symbols output by mapper 102). In other words, the inter-symbolcorrelation introduced by the ISC generation circuit may be correlationbetween symbols to be output on different subcarriers. In an exampleimplementation, the ISC generation circuit 104 may be a cyclic filter.

The response of the ISC generation circuit 104 may be determined by aplurality of coefficients, denoted p (where underlining indicates avector), which may be, for example, stored in memory 124. In an exampleimplementation, the ISC generation circuit 104 may perform a cyclic (or,equivalently, “circular”) convolution on sets of C′ symbols from themapper 102 to generate sets of C′ virtual subcarrier values conveyed assignal 105. In such an implementation, the ISC generation circuit 104may thus be described as a circulant matrix that multiplies an inputvector of C′ symbols by a C′×C′ matrix, where each row i+1 of the matrixmay be a circularly shifted version of row i of the matrix, i being aninteger from 1 to C′. For example, for C′=4 (an arbitrary value chosenfor illustration only) and p=[p1 p2 p3 p4], the matrix may be asfollows:

$\begin{bmatrix}{p\; 1} & {p\; 2} & {p\; 3} & {p\; 4} \\{p\; 4} & {p\; 1} & {p\; 2} & {p\; 3} \\{p\; 3} & {p\; 4} & {p\; 1} & {p\; 2} \\{p\; 2} & {p\; 3} & {p\; 4} & {p\; 1}\end{bmatrix}\quad$

In another example, the length of p may be less than C′, and zeropadding may be used to fill the rows and/or columns to length C′ and/orpad the rows and/or columns. For example, C′ may be equal to 6 and thematrix above (with p having four elements) may be padded to create a sixelement vector p _(z)=[p1 p2 p3 p4 0 0] and then p _(z) may be used togenerate a 6 by 6 matrix in the same way that p was used to generate the4 by 4 matrix. As another example, only the rows may be padded such thatthe result is a C′×LP matrix, where LP is the length of p (e.g., a 4×6matrix in the above example). As another example, only the columns maybe padded such that the result is a LP×C′ matrix, where LP is the lengthof p (e.g., a 6×4 matrix in the above example).

The decimation circuit 108 may be operable to decimate groups of C′virtual subcarrier values down to C transmitted physical subcarriervalues (the term “physical subcarrier” is explained below). Accordingly,the decimation circuit 108 may be operable to perform downsamplingand/or upsampling. The decimation factor may be an integer or afraction. The output of the decimator 108 hence comprises C physicalsubcarrier values per OFDM symbol. The decimation may introducesignificant aliasing in case that the ISC generation circuit 104 doesnot confine the spectrum below the Nyquist frequency of the decimation.However, in example implementations of this disclosure, such aliasing isallowed and actually improves performance because it provides anadditional degree of freedom. The C physical subcarrier values may becommunicated using C of C+Δ total subcarriers of the channel 120. A maycorrespond to the number of OFDM subcarriers on the channel 120 that arenot used for transmitting data. For example, data may not be transmitteda center subcarrier in order to reduce DC offset issues. As anotherexample, one or more subcarriers may be used as pilots to support phaseand frequency error corrections at the receiver. Additionally, zerosubcarrier padding may be used to increase the sampling rate thatseparates the sampling replicas and allow the use of low complexityanalog circuitry. The C+Δ subcarriers of channel 120 may be spaced atapproximately (e.g., within circuit tolerances) BW/(C+Δ) (according tothe Nyquist criterion) and with effective OFDM symbol duration of lessthan or equal to (C+Δ)/BW (according to the Nyquist criterion). Aspectsof the invention may, however, enable the receiver to recover theoriginal C′ symbols from the received OFDM symbol (Thus the reason forreferring to C′ as the number of “virtual subcarriers”). This deliveryof C′ symbols using C effective subcarriers of bandwidth BW/(C+Δ), andOFDM symbol timing of less than or equal to (C+Δ)/BW thus corresponds toa bandwidth reduction of (C′+Δ)/(C+Δ) or, equivalently, a symbol rateincrease of C′/C over conventional OFDM systems (assuming the samenumber, Δ, of unused subcarriers in the conventional system).

To reduce complexity, in an example implementation, the functionalitiesof 104 and 108 may be merged by calculating only a subset (C_(S)) of theC physical subcarriers subset from C′ by taking out the rows of thematrix that are related to the decimated virtual subcarriers of the ISCgenerating, C′×C′ matrix. For example, decimation of factor of 2 may beachieved by eliminating the even column vectors of the C′×C′ matrixdescribed in paragraph [0028] (assuming, for purposes of this example,that the information symbol vector (length of C′) is a row vector thatleft multiplies the matrix).

Generally speaking, in an example implementation wherein the circuit 104is a cyclic filter, methods and systems of designing the ISC generationcircuit 104 may be similar to methods and systems described in U.S.patent application Ser. No. 13/754,998 titled “Design and Optimizationof Partial Response Pulse Shape Filter,” which is incorporated byreference above. Similar to the design of the filter(s) in thesingle-carrier case described in U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/754,998, the design of a cyclic filter implementation of the circuit104 may be based on using the symbol error rate (SER) union bound as acost function and may aim to maximize the Euclidean distance associatedwith one or more identified error patterns. Using a shaping filtercharacterized by the coefficients p, the distance induced by errorpattern ε may be expressed as:

δ²(ε, p )=Σ_(n)|Σ_(k) p _([n-k])ε_([k])|²=Σ_(k)Σ_(l)ε_([k])ε*_([l])Σ_(n)p _([n-k]) p* _([n-l])  Eq. 1A

Assuming, for purposes of illustration, a spectral compression factor 2,then, after decimation by 2, EQ. 1A becomes:

δ₂ ²(ε, p )=Σ_(n)|Σ_(k) p _([2n-k])ε_([k])|²=Σ_(n)|Σ_(k)ε_([2n-2k]) p_([2k])+Σ_(k)ε_([2n-2k+1]) p _([2k−1])|²  Eq. 1B

Where the right-hand-side summation relates to odd-indexed symbols andthe left-hand-side summation relates to even-indexed symbols. Eq. 1B maythen be rewritten as:

$\begin{matrix}{{\delta_{2}^{2}\left( {\underset{\_}{\varepsilon},\underset{\_}{p}} \right)} = {\sum\limits_{n}\; \left\lbrack {{\sum\limits_{k}{\sum\limits_{m}{\varepsilon_{\lbrack{2\; k}\rbrack}\varepsilon_{\lbrack{2\; m}\rbrack}^{*}p_{\lbrack{{2\; n} - {2\; k}}\rbrack}p_{\lbrack{{2\; n} - {2\; m}}\rbrack}^{*}}}} + {\sum\limits_{k}{\sum\limits_{m}{\varepsilon_{\lbrack{{2\; k} - 1}\rbrack}\varepsilon_{\lbrack{{2\; m} - 1}\rbrack}^{*}p_{\lbrack{{2\; n} - {2\; k} + 1}\rbrack}p_{\lbrack{{2\; n} - {2\; m} + 1}\rbrack}^{*}}}} + {{2 \cdot {Real}}\left\{ {\sum\limits_{k}{\sum\limits_{m}{\varepsilon_{\lbrack{2\; k}\rbrack}\varepsilon_{\lbrack{{2\; m} - 1}\rbrack}^{*}p_{\lbrack{{2\; n} - {2\; k}}\rbrack}p_{\lbrack{{2\; n} - {2\; m} + 1}\rbrack}^{*}}}} \right\}}} \right\rbrack}} & {{{Eq}.\mspace{14mu} 1}C}\end{matrix}$

In Eq. 1C, the first and second summation terms are associated with thedistance of the even-indexed and odd-indexed virtual subcarriersrespectively. Accordingly, one goal in designing a cyclic filterimplementation of ISC generation circuit 104 may be to maximize thefirst and second terms of Eq. 1C. The third term takes on both positiveand negative values depending on the error pattern. In general, thisterm will reduce the minimum distance related to the most-probable errorpatterns. Accordingly, one goal in designing a cyclic filterimplementation of ISC generation circuit 104 may be to minimize thethird term of Eq. 1C (i.e., minimizing cross-correlation between evenand odd virtual subcarriers). Additionally or alternatively, a cyclicfilter implementation of ISC generation circuit 104 may be designed suchthat the first and second terms should have similar levels, which maycorrespond to even-indexed and odd-indexed symbol sequences havingcomparable distances (i.e., seeking energy balance between even-indexedand odd-indexed virtual subcarriers).

In the presence of frequency-selective fading channel, theinter-subcarrier correlation created by 104 (by filtering or by matrixmultiplication, for example) may be used to overcome thefrequency-selective fading and to improve detection performance at thereceiver. The processing of inter-subcarrier correlation may beperceived as “analog interleaving” over the frequency domain thatspreads each of the C′ information symbols over a plurality of frequencysubcarriers. As a result of this “analog interleaving,” a notch in oneof the subcarriers will have a relatively low impact on detection,assuming that the rest of the subcarriers that are carrying thatinformation symbol are received with sufficiently-high SNR.

Additional, or alternative, design goals for the circuit 104 may stemfrom a desire to reduce complexity of the sequence estimation in thereceiver. As an example, one design goal may be, as described in U.S.patent application Ser. No. 13/754,998, maximizing the magnitude ofcoefficients of “early” (or low-indexed) taps of a cyclic filterimplementation of circuit 104. As another example, one design goal maybe, as described in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,998,minimizing the cumulative power of the “late” (or high-indexed) taps ofa cyclic filter implementation of circuit 104.

As shown by the example simulation results in FIG. 1B (compressionfactor=2 used for purposes of illustration), a complex-valued shapingfilter can exploit the full spectrum and make the even-indexed (“ph 1”)and odd-indexed responses (“ph 2”) substantially orthogonal by usingdisjoint parts of the spectrum. FIG. 1B shows an example of thefrequency response of the even-indexed and odd-indexed coefficients of acyclic filter implementation of circuit 104 that was designed inaccordance with this disclosure. Also, shown in the lower portion ofFIG. 1B is the total/combined even and odd response, which, as can beseen, is substantially flat.

Returning to FIG. 1A, the serial-to-parallel circuit 110 may be operableto convert C physical subcarrier values conveyed serially as signal 109to C physical subcarrier values input conveyed in parallels as signals111.

In an example implementation, the subcarrier values output by thedecimation circuit 108 may be interleaved prior to being input to thecircuit 112 and/or the circuit 110 may perform interleaving of theinputted subcarrier values. This interleaver may be operable to improvethe tolerance to frequency selective fading caused by multipath that mayimpose wide notch that spans over several subcarriers. In this case theinterleaver may be used to “spread” the notch over non-consecutive(interleaved) subcarriers and therefore reduce the impact of the notchon decoding performance.

Each of the signals 103, 105, 109, and 111 may be frequency-domainsignals. The inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) circuit 112 may beoperable to convert the frequency-domain samples of signals 111 totime-domain samples of signals 113.

The parallel-to-serial circuit 114 may be operable to convert theparallel signals 113 to a serial signal 115.

The circuit 116 may be operable to process the signal 115 to generatethe signal 117. The processing may include, for example, insertion of acyclic prefix. Additionally, or alternatively, the processing mayinclude application of a windowing function to compensate for artifactsthat may result when a receiver of the transmitted signal uses the FFTto recover information carried in the transmitted signal. Windowingapplied the in transmitter 100 may be instead of, or in addition to,windowing applied in a receiver.

The transmitter front-end 118 may be operable to convert the signal 117to an analog representation, upconvert the resulting analog signal, andamplify the upconverted signal to generate the signal 119 that istransmitted into the channel 120. Thus, the transmitter front-end 118may comprise, for example, a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), mixer,and/or power amplifier. The front-end 118 may introduce non-lineardistortion and/or phase noise (and/or other non-idealities) to thesignal 117. The non-linearity of the circuit 118 may be represented asNL_(TX) which may be, for example, a polynomial, or an exponential(e.g., Rapp model). The non-linearity may incorporate memory (e.g.,Voltera series). In an example implementation, the transmitter 100 maybe operable to transmit its settings that relate to the nonlineardistortion inflicted on transmitted signals by the front-end 118. Suchtransmitted information may enable a receiver to select an appropriatenonlinear distortion model and associated parameters to apply (asdescribed below).

The channel 120 may comprise a wired, wireless, and/or opticalcommunication medium. The signal 119 may propagate through the channel120 and arrive at a receiver such as the receiver described below withrespect to FIG. 2A.

In various example embodiments, subcarrier-dependent bit-loading andtime-varying bit-loading may also be used.

FIG. 1C depicts a flowchart describing operation of an exampleimplementation of a highly-spectrally-efficient OFDM transmitter. Theprocess begins with block 152 in which a baseband bitstream is generated(e.g., by an application running on a smartphone, tablet computer,laptop computer, or other computing device).

In block 154, the baseband bitstream is mapped according to a symbolconstellation. In the example implementation depicted, C′ (an integer)sets of log 2(N) bits of the baseband bitstream are mapped to C′ N-QAMsymbols.

In block 156, the C′ symbols are cyclically convolved, using a filterdesigned as described above with reference to FIG. 1A, to generate C′virtual subcarrier values having a significant, controlled amount ofinter-symbol correlation among symbols to be output on differentsubcarriers.

In block 158, the C′ virtual subcarrier values output by the ISCgeneration circuit 104 may be decimated down to C physical subcarriervalues, each of which is to be transmitted over a respective one of theC+Δ OFDM subcarriers of the channel 120. In an example implementation,the decimation may be by a factor of between approximately 1.25 and 3.

In block 160, the C physical subcarrier values are input to the IFFT anda corresponding C+Δ time-domain values are output for transmission overC+Δ subcarriers of the channel 120.

In block 162, a cyclic prefix may be appended to the C time domainsamples resulting from block 160. A windowing function may also beapplied to the samples after appending the cyclic prefix.

In block 164 the samples resulting from block 162 may be converted toanalog, upconverted to RF, amplified, and transmitted into the channel120 during a OFDM symbol period that is approximately (e.g., withincircuit tolerances) (C+Δ)/BW.

FIG. 1D depicts a first example of a multi-mode OFDM transmitter. Thetransmitter 100A is an example multi-mode implementation of thetransmitter 100 described above. In addition to the components oftransmitter 100 described above, the transmitter 100A comprises acontrol circuit 170 and a switch 172.

The control circuit 170 may comprise, for example, an applicationspecific integrated circuit (ASIC), a programmable interrupt controller(PIC), an ARM-based processor, an x86-based processor, and/or any othersuitable circuitry operable to control a configuration of thetransmitter 100A based on one or more parameters. The parameters onwhich the configuration of the transmitter 100A may be based mayinclude, for example, input from a user of, and/or software applicationrunning on, a device (e.g., a mobile phone, laptop, base station, or thelike) in which the transmitter 100A resides. The parameters on which theconfiguration of the transmitter 100A may be based may includeperformance indicators measured by circuitry of the transmitter 100Asuch as, for example, measured noise levels, temperature, battery chargelevel, etc. The parameters on which the configuration of the transmitter100A may be based may include, for example, characteristics of data tobe transmitted. Such characteristics may include, for example, qualityof service parameters (e.g., latency and/or throughput requirements)and/or a model of non-linear distortion that the data will experience enroute to a receiver. The parameters on which the configuration of thetransmitter 100A may be based may include performance indicatorsmeasured by and fed back from a receiver. Such performance indicatorsmay include, for example, symbol error rate (SER), bit error rate (BER),signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), metrics calculated by a decoding circuit, aphase error measured by the receiver, a measurement indicative ofmultipath present in the channel, and/or any other relevant performanceindicator. The control circuit 170 may indicate a mode of operation ofthe transmitter 100A and/or control configuration of the variouscomponents of the transmitter 100B via one or more control signals(“Ctrl”).

The control circuit 170 may also be operable to generate controlmessages that indicate a configuration of the transmitter 100A. Suchcontrol messages may be, for example, inserted into the transmitteddatastream and/or transmitted on a control channel or beacon signal, toinform the receiver of the configuration of the transmitter 100A. Suchcontrol messages may be used by a multi-mode receiver for configurationof its circuitry.

The Tx front-end 118 may be as described above. Different configurationsof the front-end 118 may correspond, for example, to different powerback-off settings of an amplifier of the front-end 118. A larger powerback-off may correspond to an operating point further away from areference point (e.g., 1-dB compression point) than an operating pointcorresponding to a smaller power back-off. Consequently, a larger powerback-off setting may correspond to increased linearity at the expense ofdecreased transmitted power and energy efficiency.

In operation, the transmitter 100A may support a plurality of modes ofoperation, with each of the modes corresponding to a particularconfiguration of each of the components of the receiver 100A. In anexample implementation, a first mode of operation may be a “fullresponse” OFDM mode where inter-symbol correlation among symbols to beoutput on different subcarriers is kept below a permissible thresholdand C QAM symbols are transmitted using C physical subcarriers (or C′QAM symbols are transmitted using C′ physical subcarriers), and a secondmode of operation may be a “controlled inter-symbol correlation and/orinter-subcarrier interference (ISCI)” OFDM mode where a substantialamount of inter-symbol correlation is introduced to enable transmittingC′ QAM symbols over C physical subcarriers and/or a substantial amountof inter-subcarrier interference may be introduced as a result ofincreased non-linearity (e.g., by relaxing non-linearity requirements inamplifiers and/or mixers). In the “full response” mode, the switch 172may be closed and the ISC generation circuit 104 and decimation circuit108 may be bypassed (and the circuits 104 and 108 may be powered down tosave power). Also, in the full response mode, the front-end 118 may beconfigured to introduce relatively small amounts of non-lineardistortion by, for example, reduction of the transmitted power or byincreasing the biasing (and consequently the power consumption) of thetransmitter chain. In the “controlled ISCI” mode, on the other hand, theswitch 172 may be open and the ISC generation circuit 104 and decimationcircuit 108 may be powered up and active. Also, in the “controlled ISCI”mode the front-end 118 may be configured to introduce relatively largeramounts of non-linear distortion by, for example, increase of thetransmitted power or by decreasing the biasing (and consequently thepower consumption) of the transmitter chain.

FIG. 1E depicts a second example of a multi-mode OFDM transmitter. Thetransmitter 100B is an example multi-mode implementation of thetransmitter 100 described above. In addition to the components oftransmitter 100 described above, the transmitter 100B comprises acontrol circuit 170 and a single-carrier transmission path 176.

The control circuit 170 may be as described above with reference to FIG.1D.

The single-carrier transmission path 176 may, for example, comprise apulse shaper circuit and timing pilot insertion circuit such as thepulse shaper 104 and the timing pilot insert circuit 105 described inthe above-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964,titled “Low-Complexity, Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.”Thus, the single-carrier transmit path 176 may be operable to transmithighly-spectrally-efficient single-carrier signals having substantial,but controlled, amounts of inter-symbol correlation. The OFDM transmitpath 174 may comprise the circuits 104 through 116 described withrespect to FIG. 1D above.

Thus, when transmission is via the path 174, substantial amounts ofcorrelation may exist between subcarriers transmitted during the sameOFDM symbol period. When transmission is via path 176, on the otherhand, substantial amounts of correlation may exist between samplestransmitted in successive time periods on the same single carrier.

FIG. 1F depicts an example process for configuration of a multi-modeOFDM transmitter. In block 180, a multi-mode transmitter (e.g., 100A or100B) powers up.

In block 182 a user and/or application layer of a device (e.g., mobilephone) in which the multi-mode transmitter resides issues a command forthe multi-mode transmitter to be configured into a first mode ofoperation. Such a command may be, for example, in response to a need ordesire to communicate with a first receiver that supports a firstphysical layer protocol/standard. Additionally or alternatively, such acommand may be in response to a request sent on behalf of the firstreceiver (e.g., from a transmitter residing in the first device alongwith the first receiver). The mode of operation commanded by the userand/or application layer may be selected from a multiple communicationmodes previously determined to be available in the network. Suchdetermination may, for example, comprise a network discovery period thatthe device entered upon waking up.

In another example implementation, the command of block 182 may beissued by a network controller such as the one described below withreference to FIG. 5.

In block 184, the multi-mode transmitter is configured into the firstmode of operation. For receiver 100A, for example, block 184 maycomprise configuration into “full response” mode. For receiver 100B, forexample, block 184 may comprise configuration into OFDM mode (i.e.,configured to use path 174).

In block 186, information is transmitted, intended for the firstreceiver, by the multi-mode transmitter configured in the first mode.The first receiver may receive the transmission and process it torecover the transmitted information.

In block 188, a user and/or application layer of a device (e.g., mobilephone) in which the multi-mode transmitter resides issues a command forthe multi-mode transmitter to be configured into a second mode ofoperation. Such a command may be, for example, in response to a need ordesire to communicate with a second receiver that supports a secondphysical layer protocol/standard. Additionally or alternatively, such acommand may be in response to a request sent on behalf of the secondreceiver (e.g., from a transmitter residing in a second device alongwith a second receiver). In an example implementation, the multi-modetransmitter may, for example, acknowledge the request using mode 1communications prior to switching to mode 2. The multi-mode transmittermay, for example, be operable to switch between modes on aframe-by-frame basis. In this manner, the multi-mode transmitter may beoperable to concurrently communicate with a plurality of remote devices,according to a respective mode of operation of each of the remotedevices, according to conditions of a respective channel between thetransmitter and each of the remote devices, according to respectivedistance to each of the remote devices, according to respectiveperformance indications from each of the remote devices, and/oraccording to commands/requests from the user and/or application layer ofthe transmitter.

In block 190, the multi-mode transmitter is configured into the secondmode of operation. For receiver 100A, for example, block 184 maycomprise configuration into “controlled ISCI” mode. For receiver 100B,for example, block 184 may comprise configuration into single-carriermode (i.e., configured to use path 176).

In block 192, information is transmitted, intended for the secondreceiver, by the multi-mode transmitter configured in the second mode.

In block 194, the multi-mode transmitter powers down.

In another example implementation, a command to switch to the secondmode of operation may be issued although communication is to continuewith the first receiver (i.e., the first receiver is also switching to asecond mode of operation). For example, the switch may take place inresponse to detected channel conditions (e.g., measured SNR on one ormore particular frequency bands) which may be measured by a receiver ofthe device in which the multi-mode transmitter resides and/or feedbackfrom the first receiver.

FIG. 2A is a diagram of an example OFDM receiver. The example receiver200 comprises a front-end 202, a cyclic prefix and windowing circuit204, a serial-to-parallel conversion circuit 208, a frequency correctioncircuit 206, a fast Fourier transform (FFT) circuit 210, a per-toneequalizer 212, a phase correction circuit 214, a parallel-to-serialconversion circuit 216, a decoding circuit 218, a controlled combinedinter-symbol correlation (ISC) and/or inter-subcarrier interference(ICI) model (Controlled ISCI Model) circuit 220, a carrier recovery loopcircuit 222, a FEC decoder circuit 232, and a performance indicatormeasurement circuit 234.

The receiver front-end 202 may be operable to amplify, downconvert,and/or digitize the signal 121 to generate the signal 203. Thus, thereceiver front-end 202 may comprise, for example, a low-noise amplifier,a mixer, and/or an analog-to-digital converter. The front-end 202 may,for example, sample the received signal 121 at least C+Δ times per OFDMsymbol period. Due to non-idealities, the receiver front-end 202 mayintroduce non-linear distortion and/or phase noise to the signal 203.The non-linearity of the front end 202 may be represented as NL_(Rx)which may be, for example, a polynomial, or an exponential (e.g., Rappmodel). The non-linearity may incorporate memory (e.g., Voltera series).

The circuit 204 may be operable to process the signal 203 to generatethe signal 205. The processing may include, for example, removal of acyclic prefix. Additionally, or alternatively, the processing mayinclude application of a windowing function to compensate for artifactsthat may result from use of an FFT on a signal that is not periodic overthe FFT window. Windowing applied in the transmitter 100 may be insteadof, or in addition to, windowing applied in a receiver. The output ofthe circuit 204 may comprise C samples of the received signalcorresponding to a particular OFDM symbol received across C+Δsubcarriers.

The frequency correction circuit 206 may be operable to adjust afrequency of signal 205 to compensate for frequency errors which mayresult from, for example, limited accuracy of frequency sources used forup and down conversions. The frequency correction may be based onfeedback signal 223 from the carrier recovery circuit 222.

The serial-to-parallel conversion circuit 208 may be operable to convertC time-domain samples output serially as the signal 207 to C time-domainsamples output in parallel as signals 209.

In an example implementation, where interleaving of the subcarriervalues was performed in transmitter, the phase/frequency-corrected,equalized subcarrier values output at link 215 may be de-interleavedprior to being input to the circuit 218 and/or the circuit 216 mayperform de-interleaving of the subcarrier values. In this case theControlled ISCI Model 220 (comprising the combined ISC model used by themodulator and/or ICI model reflecting the channel non-idealities) shouldconsider the interleaving operation.

Each of the signals 203, 205, 207, and 209 may be time-domain signals.The fast Fourier transform (FFT) circuit 210 may be operable to convertthe time-domain samples conveyed as signals 209 to C physical subcarriervalues conveyed as signals 211.

The per-tone equalizer 212 may be operable to perform frequency-domainequalization of each of the C physical subcarrier values to compensatefor non-idealities (e.g., multipath, additive white Gaussian noise,(AWGN), etc.) experienced by a corresponding one of the C OFDMsubcarriers. In an example implementation, the equalization may comprisemultiplying a sample of each of signals 211 by a respective one of Ccomplex coefficients determined by the equalization circuit 212. Suchcoefficients may be adapted from OFDM symbol to OFDM symbol. Adaption ofsuch coefficients may be based on decisions of decoding circuit 218. Inan example implementation, the adaptation may be based on an errorsignal 221 defined as the difference, output by circuit 230, between theequalized and phase-corrected samples of signal 217 and thecorresponding reconstructed signal 227 b output by the decoding circuit218. Generation of the reconstructed signal 227 b may be similar togeneration of the reconstructed signal 203 in the above-incorporatedU.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964 (but modified for the OFDMcase, as opposed to the single-carrier case described therein) and/or asdescribed below with reference to FIG. 2D.

The phase correction circuit 214 may be operable to adjust the phase ofthe received physical subcarrier values. The correction may be based onthe feedback signal 225 from the carrier recovery circuit 222 and maycompensate for phase errors introduced, for example, by frequencysources in the front-end of the transmitter and/or the front-end 202 ofthe receiver.

The parallel-to-serial conversion circuit 216 may convert the C physicalsubcarrier values output in parallel by circuit 214 to a serialrepresentation. The physical subcarrier values bits may then be conveyedserially to the decoding circuit 218. Alternatively, 216 may be bypassedand the decoding at 218 may be done iteratively over the parallel(vector) signal 215.

The controlled ISCI model circuit 220 may be operable to store tapcoefficients p and/or nonlinearity model

The stored values may, for example, have been sent to the receiver 200by the transmitter 100 in one or more control messages. The controlledISCI model circuit 220 may be operable to convert a time-domainrepresentation of a nonlinearity model to a frequency domainrepresentation. The model 220 may, for example, store (e.g., into alook-up table) multiple sets of filter coefficients and/or nonlinearitymodels and may be operable to dynamically select (e.g., during operationbased on recent measurements) the most appropriate one(s) for theparticular circumstances.

The decoding circuit 218 may be operable to process the signal 217 torecover symbols carried therein. In an example implementation, thedecoding circuit 218 may be an iterative maximum likelihood or maximum apriori decoder that uses symbol slicing or other techniques that enableestimating individual symbols rather than sequences of symbols. Inanother example implementation, the decoding circuit 218 may be asequence estimation circuit operable to perform sequence estimation todetermine the C′ symbols that were generated in the transmittercorresponding to the received OFDM symbol. Such sequence estimation maybe based on maximum likelihood (ML) and/or maximum a priori (MAP)sequence estimation algorithm(s), including reduced-complexity (e.g.,storing reduced channel state information) versions thereof. Thedecoding circuit 218 may be able to recover the C′ symbols from the Cphysical subcarriers (where C′>C) as a result of the controlledinter-symbol correlation and/or aliasing that was introduced by thetransmitter (e.g., as a result of processing by ISC generation circuit104 and/or the aliasing introduced by the decimation circuit 108). Thedecoding circuit 218 may receive, from circuit 220, a frequency-domaincontrolled ISCI model of non-linearity, phase noise, and/or othernon-idealities experienced by one or more of the C physical subcarriervalues arriving at the decoding circuit 218.

The decoding circuit 218 may use the controlled ISCI model to calculatemetrics similar to the manner in which a model is used to calculatemetrics in above-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No.13/754,964 (but modified for the OFDM case as opposed to thesingle-carrier case described therein) and/or as described below withreference to FIG. 2C. The decoding circuit 218 may also use thecontrolled ISCI model provided by circuit 220 to generate signals 227 aand 227 b, as described herein. In an example implementation, thedecoding circuit 218 is operable to get at its input C equalized andphase-corrected physical subcarrier values and generate LLR valuesassociated with the bits of the C′ constellation symbols that whereoriginally loaded over the virtual subcarriers of the OFDM transmitter.The LLRs may be generated by checking multiple hypotheses of C′constellation symbols based on the received samples. The best hypothesismay be used to generate the symbols and hard bits detection. In case ofusing a soft error correction code, an LLR interface that reflects thereliability of the bits (analog signal) rather than the hard bits (i.e.,“0”, “1”) may be used. A remaining one or more of the hypotheses (thesecond-best, third-best, etc.) may be used to generate the LLR values.For example, assuming that a particular bit was detected as “1”according to the best hypothesis, the LLR for this bit may be providedfrom the distance of the best hypothesis to the second best hypothesisthat estimates this particular bit as “0”. The LLR values for thedifferent virtual subcarriers may be weighted according to theirrespective SNR. In case of frequency-selective fading channel, eachsubcarrier may have a different gain that corresponds to a different SNRper subcarrier. Because LLR value reflects the bit reliability, in anexample implementation, the LLRs may be weighted according to theappropriate subcarrier gain to achieve Maximum Likelihood performance.In an example implementation, log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) determined ina receiver (e.g., in circuit 218) may have a noise variance componentthat varies with subcarrier. This may be because the per-subcarrierchannel gain (due, for example, to the analog channel selection filtercircuits and channel) may vary with frequency but the RF front-end gainat the receiver may be fixed.

For each received OFDM symbol, the circuit 220 may generate afrequency-domain controlled ISCI model of the channel over which theOFDM symbol was received. The controlled ISCI model of 220 may accountfor non-linear distortion experienced by the received OFDM symbol, phasenoise experienced by the received OFDM symbol, and/or othernon-idealities. For example, a third-order time domain distortion may bemodeled in the frequency domain as:

$\begin{matrix}{{y(t)} = {{x(t)} \cdot \left( {1 - {r \cdot ^{j\phi} \cdot {{x(t)}}^{2}}} \right)}} \\{= {{x(t)} - {r \cdot ^{j\phi} \cdot {x(t)} \cdot {x^{*}(t)} \cdot {x(t)}}}}\end{matrix}$ Y(ω) = X(ω) − r ⋅ ^(jϕ) ⋅ X(ω) ⊗ X^(*)(−ω) ⊗ X(ω),

where:

x(t), X(ω)—are the input signal in the time domain and frequency domain,respectively;

y(t), Y(ω)—are the distorted output signal in the time domain andfrequency domain, respectively;

r·e^(jφ)—is the complex distortion coefficients;

( )*—denotes complex conjugate operator; and

—stands for the convolution operator.

The carrier recovery loop circuit 222 may be operable to recover phaseand frequency of one or more of the C OFDM subcarriers of the channel120. The carrier recovery loop 222 may generate a frequency error signal223 and a phase error signal 225. The phase and/or frequency error maybe determined by comparing physical subcarrier values of signal 217 to areconstructed signal 227 a. Accordingly, the frequency error and/orphase error may be updated from OFDM symbol to OFDM symbol. Thereconstructed signal 227 b may be generated similar to the manner inwhich the reconstructed signal 207 of the above-incorporated U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/754,964 (but modified for the OFDM case, asopposed to the single-carrier case described therein) and/or asdescribed below with reference to FIG. 2D.

The performance indicator measurement circuit 234 may be operable tomeasure, estimate, and/or otherwise determine characteristics ofreceived signals and convey such performance measurement indications toa transmitter collocated with the receiver 200 for transmitting thefeedback to the remote side. Example performance indicators that thecircuit 234 may determine and/or convey to a collocated transmitter fortransmission of a feedback signal include: signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)per subcarrier (e.g., determined based on frequency-domain values at theoutput of FFT 210 and corresponding decisions at the output of thedecoding circuit 218 and/or FEC decoder 232), symbol error rate (SER)(e.g., measured by decoding circuit 218 and conveyed to the circuit234), and/or bit error rate (BER) (e.g., measured by the FEC decoder andconveyed to the circuit 234).

FIGS. 2B and 2C depict a flowchart describing operation of an exampleimplementation of a highly-spectrally-efficient OFDM receiver. Theprocess begins with block 242 in which an OFDM symbol arrives, as signal121, at front-end 202 and is amplified, down-converted, and digitized togenerate C+Δ+P time-domain samples of the OFDM symbol, where P is thesize of the cyclic prefix.

In block 244, the cyclic prefix may be removed and a windowing functionmay be applied.

In block 246, frequency correction may be applied to the time-domainsamples based on an error signal 223 determined by the carrier recoverycircuit 222.

In block 248, the frequency corrected time-domain samples are convertedto frequency-corrected frequency-domain physical subcarrier values bythe FFT circuit 210.

In block 250, the frequency-corrected physical subcarrier values outputby the FFT are equalized in the frequency domain by the per-subcarrierequalizer circuit 212.

In block 252, one or more of the frequency-corrected and equalizedphysical subcarrier values are phase corrected based on a phasecorrection signal 225 generated by the carrier recovery circuit 222.

In block 254, the vector of C frequency-corrected, equalized, andphase-corrected received physical subcarrier values is input to decodingcircuit 218 and sequence estimation is used to determine the bestestimates of the vector of C′ symbols that resulted in the vector of Cfrequency-corrected, equalized, and phase-corrected received physicalsubcarrier values. Example details of metric generation performed duringthe sequence estimation are described below with reference to FIG. 2C.

In block 256, the best estimate of the vector of C′ symbols isdetermined by decoding circuit 218 and is output as signal 219 to FECdecoder 232, which outputs corrected values on signal 233. Exampledetails of selecting the best candidate vector are described below withreference to FIG. 2C.

Referring to FIG. 2C, in block 262, the decoding circuit 218 generates aplurality of candidate vectors (each candidate vector corresponding to apossible value of the vector of C′ symbols generated by thetransmitter), and generates a corresponding plurality of reconstructedphysical subcarrier vectors by applying the controlled ISCI model to thecandidates.

In block 264, the reconstructed physical subcarrier vectors are comparedto the vector of frequency-corrected, equalized, and/or phase-correctedreceived physical subcarrier values to calculate metrics.

In block 266, the candidate vector corresponding to the best metric isselected as the best candidate, and the C′ symbols of the best candidateare output as signal 219, to, for example, FEC decoder 232 and/or aninterleaver (not shown).

FIG. 2D depicts a flowchart describing operation of an example decodingcircuit of a highly-spectrally-efficient OFDM receiver. The flowchartbegins with block 272 in which a vector of C received physicalsubcarrier values arrive at decoding circuit 218.

In block 274, the best candidate vector is determined to a first levelof confidence. For example, in block 274, the best candidate vector maybe determined based on a first number of iterations of a sequenceestimation algorithm.

In block 276, the controlled ISCI model may be applied to the bestcandidate vector determined in block 274 to generate reconstructedsignal 227 a.

In block 278, the best candidate vector is determined to a second levelof confidence. For example, the best candidate determined in block 278may be based on a second number of iterations of the sequence estimationalgorithm, where the second number of iterations is larger than thefirst number of iterations.

In block 280, the controlled ISCI model may be applied to the bestcandidate determined in block 278 to generate reconstructed signal 227b.

In block 282, coefficients used by the equalizer 212 are updated/adaptedbased on the reconstructed signal 227 b determined in block 280.

In block 284, subsequent received physical subcarrier values areequalized based on the coefficients calculated in block 282.

Blocks 286 and 288 may occur in parallel with blocks 278-284.

In block 286, the carrier recovery loop 222 may determine frequencyand/or phase error based on signal 227 a calculated in block 276.

In block 288, samples received during a subsequent OFDM symbol periodmay be frequency corrected based on the error determined in block 286and/or subsequent received physical subcarrier values are phasecorrected based on the error determined in block 286.

FIG. 3A depicts a first example of a multi-mode OFDM receiver. Thereceiver 200A is an example multi-mode implementation of the receiver200 described above. In addition to the components of receiver 200described above (for clarity of illustration only the decoding circuit218 and the controlled ISCI model circuit 220 are shown), the receiver200A comprises a control circuit 302.

The control circuit 302 may comprise, for example, an applicationspecific integrated circuit (ASIC), a programmable interrupt controller(PIC), an ARM-based processor, an x86-based processor, and/or any othersuitable circuitry operable to control a configuration of the receiverbased on one or more parameters. The parameters on which theconfiguration of the receiver 200A may be based may include, forexample, input from a user of, and/or software application running 200Aon, a device (e.g., a mobile phone, laptop, base station, or the like)in which the receiver resides. The parameters on which the configurationof the receiver 200A may be based may include performance indicatorsmeasured by circuitry of the receiver 200A such as, for example,measured noise levels, temperature, battery charge level, symbol errorrate (SER), bit error rate (BER), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), metricscalculated by decoding circuit 218, inputs to the controlled ISCI modelcircuit 220, an output of the controlled ISCI model 229, a phase errormeasured by the receiver, a measurement indicative of an amount ofmultipath in the channel, and/or any other relevant performanceindicator. The parameters on which the configuration of the receiver200A may be based may include characteristics of data to be received.Such characteristics may include, for example, quality of serviceparameters (e.g., latency and/or throughput requirements) and/or a modelof non-linear distortion experienced by the data during transmission,propagation over the channel, and/or reception by the receiver 200A. Theparameters on which the configuration of the receiver 200A is based maybe communicated (e.g., in a beacon signal) by a transmitter from whichthe receiver 200A desires to receive communications. Such parameters mayinclude, for example, power back-off (and/or other indications ofnon-linearity) symbol constellation in use, baud rate, etc. Theparameters on which the configuration of the receiver may be based mayinclude a mode of operation of a transmitter from which the receiverdesires to receive communications. Such mode of operation may, forexample, be communicated to the receiver 200A in a control message(e.g., in a beacon signal) and relayed to the control circuit 302.

The control circuit 302 may also be operable to generate controlmessages that indicate, for example, a configuration of the receiver200A, channel and/or other communication conditions. Example channeland/or communication conditions include signal-to-noise ratio of thechannel, bandwidth of the channel, frequency-selective fading detectedon the channel, quality of service requirements of the receiver,bit-error rate in the receiver, symbol error rate in the receiver,and/or packet error rate in the receiver. Such control messages may be,for example, inserted into the transmitted datastream and/or transmittedon a control channel or beacon signal, to provide feedback to atransmitter. Such control messages may be used by a multi-modetransmitter for configuration of its circuitry.

In operation, the receiver 200A may support a plurality of modes ofoperation, with each of the modes corresponding to a particularconfiguration of the decoding circuit 218 and the controlled ISCI model220.

In an example implementation, a first mode of operation may be a “fullresponse” OFDM mode and a second mode may be a “controlled ISCI” mode.In the full response mode, the decoding circuit 218 and controlled ISCImodel circuit 220 may be configured to processes OFDM symbols havingrelatively low inter-symbol correlation among symbols received ondifferent subcarriers (e.g., below a permissible threshold) to recover CQAM (or PAM, QPSK, etc.) symbols from C physical subcarriers or torecover C′ QAM (or PAM, QPSK, etc.) symbols from C′ physicalsubcarriers. In the “full response” mode, p may be unused in thecontrolled ISCI model circuit 220 or may be set to values (e.g., theidentity matrix) that do not introduce inter-symbol correlation amongsymbols to be output on different subcarriers during matrixmultiplication of a candidate vector, or the controlled ISCI modelcircuit 220 may be bypassed and turned off as well as decoding circuit218. In the controlled ISCI mode, the decoding circuit 218 andcontrolled ISCI model circuit 220 may be configured to processes OFDMsymbols having a substantial amount of inter-symbol correlation amongsymbols output on different subcarriers intentionally introduced by thetransmitter and to recover C′ QAM (or PAM, QPSK, etc.) symbols from Cphysical subcarriers.

FIG. 3B depicts a second example of a multi-mode OFDM receiver. Thereceiver 200B comprises a control circuit 302, an OFDM receive path 304,a carrier recovery loop 306, a single carrier receive path 308, aninter-symbol correlation and/or inter-subcarrier interference (ISCI)modeling circuit 310, and a decoding circuit 312.

The control circuit 302 may be as described above.

The OFDM receive path may, for example comprise components 204-216, and230 described above with reference to FIG. 2A. The signals 203, 215,223, 225, and 217 may be as described above.

The carrier recovery circuit 306 may be operable to perform functions ofthe carrier recovery circuit 222 described above and the carrierrecovery circuit 208 described in the above-incorporated U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/754,964 titled “Low-Complexity,Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.” The signals 223, 225, 217,and 227 a may be as described above in this application. The signals2220 and 2280 may correspond to signals 222 and 228, respectively, ofthe above-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964titled “Low-Complexity, Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.”

The single-carrier receive path 308 may comprise components 109, 110,202, 204, 206, and 212 of the above-incorporated U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 13/754,964 titled “Low-Complexity, Highly-Spectrally-EfficientCommunications.” The signals 1190 and 1220 may correspond to signals 119and 122 (or, equivalently, signal 232), respectively, of theabove-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964 titled“Low-Complexity, Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.”

The decoding circuit 312 may be operable to perform functions of thedecoding circuit 218 described above and the decoding circuit 210 andnonlinearity circuits 236 a and 236 b of the above-incorporated U.S.patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964 titled “Low-Complexity,Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.” The signals 227 b, 215, 227a, and 219 may be as described above. The signals 2340 and 1320 maycorrespond to signals 234 and 132, respectively, of theabove-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964 titled“Low-Complexity, Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.”

When the receiver is configured to use path 304 (“controlled ISCI OFDMmode”), ISCI model circuit 310 may perform functions of the circuit 220described above. When the receiver is configured to use path 308(“controlled ISI mode”) the ISCI model circuit 310 may convey ĥ and/or

(each of which is described in the above-incorporated U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 13/754,964 titled “Low-Complexity,Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.”) as to the decoding circuit312.

In operation, when the receiver 200B is configured to use path 304, thesequence estimation may perform sequence estimation on samples receivedvia C physical subcarriers to recover C′ QAM (or PAM, QPSK, et.) symbolsper OFDM symbol period. When the receiver 200B is configured to use path308, the sequence estimation may perform sequence estimation on areceived single-carrier partial response signal.

FIG. 3C depicts an example process for configuration of a multi-modeOFDM transmitter.

In block 322, the receiver powers up.

In block 324, the receiver determines to enter a first mode ofoperation. For example, the receiver 200A may determine to enter a “fullresponse” mode. As another example, the receiver 200B may determine toenter a “single-carrier mode.” This determination may be made based on,for example, a user and/or application layer of the device in which thereceiver resides indicating a need to communicate in accordance with thefirst mode of operation. This determination may additionally oralternatively be made based on, for example, the first mode being adefault mode which the receiver may use to listen foravailability/support (e.g., via broadcast beacons) of a second mode ofoperation by transmitters of other, in-range devices. This determinationmay additionally or alternatively be made based on, for example,measurements by the receiver (e.g., signal strength and/orsignal-to-noise ratio on particular frequency bands, quality of servicerequirements, and/or the like) and/or input from other sensors orreceivers (e.g., Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and/or GPS receivers).

In an example implementation, prior to deciding, or upon deciding, toenter a first mode of operation, the receiver may send feedback to atransmitting device from which the receiver desires to receivecommunications while operating the first mode. The feedback may include,for example, the configuration of the receiver and/or channel and/orother communication conditions (e.g., SNR of one or more bands on thechannel, quality of service requirements of the receiver, bit errorrates in the receiver, symbol error rates in the receiver, packet errorrates in the receiver, and/or the like).

In block 326, the receiver may be configured into the first mode andbegin listening for communications. In an example implementation, atransmitter of the device in which the receiver resides may transmit(e.g., broadcast) the determined configuration of the receiver.

In block 328, a signal may be received and processed by the receiveroperating in the first mode to recover information contained in thereceived signal. For example, in the receiver 200A block 328 maycomprise processing an OFDM symbol received on C subcarriers to recoverC QAM symbols. As another example, in the receiver 200B, block 328 maycomprise processing a receive inter-symbol correlated (ISC) as describedin above-incorporated U.S. patent application Ser. No. 13/754,964 titled“Low-Complexity, Highly-Spectrally-Efficient Communications.”

In block 330, the receiver determines to enter a second mode ofoperation. This determination may be based, for example, on one or ofthe considerations described with respect to block 324. Additionally oralternatively, this determination may be based on the informationrecovered in block 330 (e.g., a control message instructing transitionto the second mode).

In an example implementation, prior to deciding, or upon deciding, toenter a first mode of operation, the receiver may send feedback to atransmitting device from which the receiver desires to receivecommunications while operating the second mode. The feedback mayinclude, for example, the configuration of the receiver and/or channeland/or other communication conditions (e.g., SNR of one or more bands onthe channel, quality of service requirements of the receiver, bit errorrates in the receiver, symbol error rates in the receiver, packet errorrates in the receiver, and/or the like).

In block 332, the receiver may be configured into the second mode andbegin listening for communications. In an example implementation, atransmitter of the device in which the receiver resides may transmit(e.g., broadcast) the determined configuration of the receiver.

In block 334, a signal may be received and processed by the receiveroperating in the second mode to recover information contained in thereceived signal. For example, in the receiver 200A block 334 maycomprise processing an OFDM symbol received on C subcarriers to recoverC′ QAM symbols. As another example, in the receiver 200B, block 328 maycomprise processing an OFDM symbol received on C subcarriers to recoverC′ QAM symbols.

FIG. 4 is a flowchart describing a process for mitigating the effects offrequency-selective fading in a multi-mode communication system. In caseof frequency selective fading channel, feedback from a receiving devicemay be used to dynamically adapt transmission properties.

In block 402, while transmitting device and receiving device arecommunicating using OFDM, frequency selective fading is causing asignificant notch that is critically impacting one or more subcarriers.For example, the notch may be reducing the received SNR of thesubcarrier(s) below a certain level (e.g., a level that is predeterminedand/or algorithmically controlled during run time).

In block 404, an identification of such impacted subcarrier(s) may besent from the receiving device to the transmitting device (e.g., over acontrol channel).

In block 406, in an example implementation, in response to receiving theindication sent in block 304, the transmitting device disablestransmission of data over the impacted subcarrier(s). The transmittingdevice may disable transmission of data over the impacted subcarrier(s)by, for example, reconfiguring the mapper 102 (e.g., changing the valueof C′ and/or configuring the mapper 102 to insert pilot symbols betweendata symbols), changing _p, reconfiguring the decimation circuit 108(e.g., changing the value of C), and/or reconfiguring the mappingperformed by the serial-to-parallel circuit 110. In another exampleimplementation, in response to the indication sent in block 304, thetransmitting device may switch from a partial response OFDM mode to afull response OFDM mode, which may be less sensitive to deep notchesthan the partial response OFDM mode. For example, when more than athreshold number of subcarriers are being critically impacted, thetransmitter may decide (or may receive a decision from the receiver) toswitch from a partial response OFDM mode to a full response OFDM mode.In another example implementation, in response to the indication sent inblock 304, the transmitting device may switch from a partial responseOFDM mode to a single-carrier mode to use a single channel that is notbeing critically impacted. For example, when more than a thresholdnumber of subcarriers are being critically impacted, the transmitter maydecide (or may receive a decision from the receiver) to switch from apartial response OFDM mode to a single-carrier mode. Becausesingle-carrier mode may actually be being more sensitive to deepnotches, it may be preferable to instead switch to full response OFDMmode rather than to single-carrier mode).

In block 408, the receiving device may determine that data transmissionon the disabled subcarriers should resume.

In block 410, in an example implementation, the instruction to resumedata transmission on the disabled subcarrier(s) may be sent (e.g., via acontrol channel). In another example implementation, where thecommunications had switched from OFDM to single-carrier, block 408 maycomprise a switch back to OFDM may occur. In another exampleimplementation, where the communications had switched from partialresponse OFDM to full response OFDM, block 410 may comprise a switchback to partial response OFDM. In an example implementation, such adetermination may be made by monitoring pilot signal(s) that thetransmitting device transmits on the disabled subcarrier(s). Forexample, the receiving device may monitor a characteristic (e.g., SNR)of the pilot signal(s) and determine to resume use of the subcarriers(s)upon a significant and/or sustained change in the characteristic (e.g.,upon SNR of the pilot signal(s) increasing above a determined thresholdfor a determined amount of time). In an example implementation, thedetermination to resume data transmission on the disabled subcarrier(s)may be based on the one or more characteristics of subcarriers adjacentto the disabled subcarrier(s). For example, while subcarrier N isdisabled, the receiving device may monitor SNR of adjacent subcarriersN−1 and/or N+1, and may decide enable subcarrier N in response to asignificant and/or sustained increase in the SNR of subcarrier(s) N−1and/or N+1. The first example above for SNR estimation of disabledsubcarrier(s) which is based on pilots, may be more accurate than thesecond example which is based on SNR estimation using adjacentsubcarriers. However, the second example does not “waste” power on pilotsubcarrier(s) transmission thus may provide higher power for theinformation (modulated) subcarriers assuming that the transmitted poweris fixed. The relative increased power of the modulated subcarriers mayimprove decoding performance (e.g., SER, BER, packet error rate).

Similarly, feedback from the receiving device (e.g., in the form ofsubcarrier SNR measurements) may be used to adapt the inter-symbolcorrelation (ISC) generation circuit 104 and/or decimation circuit 108.Such adaptation may, for example, give relatively-high-SNR subcarriersrelatively-high coefficients and relatively-low-SNR subcarriersrelatively-low coefficients. Such adaptation of coefficients may be usedto optimize communication capacity (or to achieve a target communicationcapacity) between the transmitting device and the receiving device. Thecontrol channel latency and adaptation rate may be controlled to be fastenough to accommodate channel coherence time.

FIG. 5 is a diagram of an example network in which aspects of thisdisclosure are in use. Shown in FIG. 5 are a network core 502, a networkcontroller 504, and a terminal 506. The network core 502 may be, forexample, a wide area network (WAN) (e.g., the Internet), a local areanetwork (LAN), cellular provider core network, and/or the like. Thenetwork controller 504 may be, for example, a LAN access point, awireless LAN access point, a cellular base station, a cellular radionetwork controller, and/or the like. The link 503 may be wired,wireless, and/or optical. The terminal 506 may be, for example, apersonal computer, a smartphone, a table computer, and/or the like. Thelink 505 may be wired, wireless, and/or optical.

In an example implementation, circuitry of a transmitter (e.g., 100) maycomprise a symbol mapper circuit (e.g., 102) and capable of operating inat least two modes. While the circuitry operates in a first of themodes, the number of symbols output by the mapper circuit for afirst-mode orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symboltransmitted by the transmitter may be greater than the number ofdata-carrying subcarriers used to transmit the first-mode OFDM symbol.While the circuitry operates in a second of the modes, the number ofsymbols output by the mapper circuit for a second-mode orthogonalfrequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol transmitted by thetransmitter may be less than or equal to the number of data-carryingsubcarriers used to transmit the second-mode OFDM symbol. The first-modeOFDM symbol and the second mode OFDM symbol may be transmitted via achannel having significant amount of nonlinearity. The nonlinearity maydegrade a reception performance metric (e.g., symbol error rate, biterror rate, packet error rate, or the like) of the first-mode OFDMsymbol by less than 1 dB. The nonlinearity may degrade the receptionperformance metric of the second-mode OFDM symbol by 1 dB or more. Thesecond-mode OFDM symbol may be transmitted via a channel havingnonlinearity that degrades the performance metric by less than 1 dB. Thefirst-mode OFDM may be generated via a decimation which introduces asignificant amount of aliasing such that the ratio of P1 to P2 is equalto or less than a threshold signal-to-noise ratio of a receiver to whichthe OFDM subcarriers are transmitted, where P1 is total signal power ofthe C′ virtual subcarrier values prior to the decimating, and P2 is thesignal power of a portion of the C′ virtual subcarrier values residingat a frequency above a folding frequency determined by a decimationfactor (e.g., for decimation by a factor of two, P2 may be the power inthe upper half of the C′ virtual subcarrier values).

Symbols output by the symbol mapper circuit may be N-QAM symbols, Nbeing an integer. An input of the symbol mapper circuit may be a forwarderror correction encoded bitstream. The circuitry may comprise one orboth of: an inter-symbol correlation (ISC) generation circuit and adecimator circuit. While the circuitry operates in the first of themodes, symbols output by the symbol mapper circuit may be processed bythe one or both of an ISC generation circuit and a decimator circuit.While the circuitry operates in the second of the modes, symbols outputby the symbol mapper circuit may bypass the one or both of an ISCgeneration circuit and a decimator circuit. The ISC generation circuitmay be a cyclic filter circuit. The circuitry may comprise an inversefast Fourier transform (IFFT) circuit and one or both of: aninter-symbol correlation (ISC) generation circuit and a decimatorcircuit. While the circuitry operates in the first of the modes, symbolsoutput by the symbol mapper circuit may be converted to physicalsubcarrier values by the one or both of an inter-symbol correlation(ISC) generation circuit and a decimator circuit prior to being input tothe IFFT circuit. While the circuitry operates in the second of themodes, symbols output by the symbol mapper circuit may be input to theIFFT circuit without first being converted to physical subcarriervalues. The circuitry may comprise a filtering and/or decimation circuitand an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) circuit.

While the circuitry operates in a first of the modes the number ofsymbols (e.g., C′) output by the symbol mapper circuit may be equal to afirst number, the filtering and/or decimation circuit may multiply thefirst number of symbols by a matrix to generate a second number (e.g.,C) of physical subcarrier values. A first dimension of the matrix may besmaller than or equal to the first number and a second dimension of thematrix may be equal to the first number. The second number of physicalsubcarrier values may be transformed to the first-mode OFDM symbol bythe IFFT circuit. While the circuitry operates in a second of the modes,the number of symbols output by the mapper circuit may be equal to thesecond number, and the second number of symbols may be transformed tothe second-mode OFDM symbol by the IFFT circuit.

The circuitry may comprise an inter-symbol correlation (ISC) generationcircuit. While the circuitry operates in the first of the modes, theinter-symbol correlation (ISC) generation circuit performs a cyclicconvolution on symbols output by the symbol mapper circuit. While thecircuitry operates in the first of the modes, each of the data-carryingsubcarriers used to transmit the first-mode OFDM symbol may have aparticular bandwidth. While the circuitry operates in the second of themodes, each of the data-carrying subcarriers used to transmit thesecond-mode OFDM symbol may have the particular bandwidth. The circuitrymay be configurable between the first and the second of the modes duringoperation based on feedback from a receiving device, channel or othercommunication conditions, a network controller, an application layer ofthe transmitter, and/or user input. At least a portion of the circuitryused while the transmitter operates in the first of the modes may bereused while the transmitter operates in the second of the modes. Afirst portion of the circuitry may be powered off while operating in thefirst of the modes, and a second portion of the circuitry may be poweredoff while the circuitry is operating in the second of the modes. A limiton an amount of non-linear distortion introduced to the first-mode OFDMsymbol by the transmitter may be lower than a limit on an amount ofnon-linear distortion introduced to the second-mode OFDM symbol by thetransmitter. The circuitry may be configurable to switch between thefirst of the modes and the second of the modes on a frame-by-framebasis.

Other implementations may provide a non-transitory computer readablemedium and/or storage medium, and/or a non-transitory machine readablemedium and/or storage medium, having stored thereon, a machine codeand/or a computer program having at least one code section executable bya machine and/or a computer, thereby causing the machine and/or computerto perform the processes as described herein.

Methods and systems disclosed herein may be realized in hardware,software, or a combination of hardware and software. Methods and systemsdisclosed herein may be realized in a centralized fashion in at leastone computing system, or in a distributed fashion where differentelements are spread across several interconnected computing systems. Anykind of computing system or other apparatus adapted for carrying out themethods described herein is suited. A typical combination of hardwareand software may be a general-purpose computing system with a program orother code that, when being loaded and executed, controls the computingsystem such that it carries out methods described herein. Anothertypical implementation may comprise an application specific integratedcircuit (ASIC) or chip with a program or other code that, when beingloaded and executed, controls the ASIC such that is carries out methodsdescribed herein.

While methods and systems have been described herein with reference tocertain implementations, it will be understood by those skilled in theart that various changes may be made and equivalents may be substitutedwithout departing from the scope of the present method and/or system. Inaddition, many modifications may be made to adapt a particular situationor material to the teachings of the present disclosure without departingfrom its scope. Therefore, it is intended that the present method and/orsystem not be limited to the particular implementations disclosed, butthat the present method and/or system will include all implementationsfalling within the scope of the appended claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. A transmitter comprising: circuitry comprising asymbol mapper circuit and being operable in at least two modes, wherein:while said circuitry operates in a first of said modes, the number ofsymbols output by said mapper circuit for a first-mode orthogonalfrequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol transmitted by saidtransmitter is greater than the number of data-carrying subcarriers usedto transmit said first-mode OFDM symbol; and while said circuitryoperates in a second of said modes, the number of symbols output by saidmapper circuit for a second-mode orthogonal frequency divisionmultiplexing (OFDM) symbol transmitted by said transmitter is less thanor equal to the number of data-carrying subcarriers used to transmitsaid second-mode OFDM symbol.
 2. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein:said first-mode OFDM symbol and said second mode OFDM symbol aretransmitted via a channel having significant amount of nonlinearity;said nonlinearity degrades a reception performance metric of saidfirst-mode OFDM symbol by less than 1 dB; and said nonlinearity degradesthe reception performance metric of said second-mode OFDM symbol by 1 dBor more.
 3. The method of claim 1, wherein said first-mode OFDM isgenerated via a decimation which introduces a significant amount ofaliasing such that the ratio of P1 to P2 is equal to or less than athreshold signal-to-noise ratio of a receiver to which said OFDMsubcarriers are transmitted, wherein: P1 is total signal power of saidC′ virtual subcarrier values prior to said decimating; and P2 is thesignal power of a portion of said C′ virtual subcarrier values residingat a frequency above a folding frequency determined by a decimationfactor.
 4. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein symbols output by saidsymbol mapper circuit are N-QAM symbols, N being an integer.
 5. Thetransmitter of claim 1, wherein an input of said symbol mapper circuitis a forward error correction encoded bitstream.
 6. The transmitter ofclaim 1, wherein said circuitry comprises one or both of: aninter-symbol correlation (ISC) generation circuit and a decimatorcircuit, wherein: while said circuitry operates in said first of saidmodes, symbols output by said symbol mapper circuit are processed bysaid one or both of an ISC generation circuit and a decimator circuit;and while said circuitry operates in said second of said modes, symbolsoutput by said symbol mapper circuit bypass said one or both of an ISCgeneration circuit and a decimator circuit.
 7. The transmitter of claim6, wherein the ISC generation circuit is a cyclic filter circuit.
 8. Thetransmitter of claim 1, wherein said circuitry comprises an inverse fastFourier transform (IFFT) circuit and one or both of: an inter-symbolcorrelation (ISC) generation circuit and a decimator circuit, wherein:while said circuitry operates in said first of said modes, symbolsoutput by said symbol mapper circuit are converted to physicalsubcarrier values by said one or both of an inter-symbol correlation(ISC) generation circuit and a decimator circuit prior to being input tosaid IFFT circuit; and while said circuitry operates in said second ofsaid modes, symbols output by said symbol mapper circuit are input tosaid IFFT circuit without first being converted to physical subcarriervalues.
 9. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein said circuitry comprisesa filtering and/or decimation circuit and an inverse fast Fouriertransform (IFFT) circuit, wherein: while said circuitry operates in afirst of said modes: said number of symbols output by said symbol mappercircuit is equal to a first number; said filtering and/or decimationcircuit multiplies said first number of symbols by a matrix to generatea second number of physical subcarrier values, wherein a first dimensionof said matrix is smaller than or equal to said first number and asecond dimension of said matrix is equal to said first number; and saidsecond number of physical subcarrier values are transformed to saidfirst-mode OFDM symbol by said IFFT circuit; and while said circuitryoperates in a second of said modes: said number of symbols output bysaid mapper circuit is equal to said second number; and said secondnumber of symbols are transformed to said second-mode OFDM symbol bysaid IFFT circuit.
 10. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein saidcircuitry comprises an inter-symbol correlation (ISC) generationcircuit, wherein: while said circuitry operates in said first of saidmodes, said an inter-symbol correlation (ISC) generation circuitperforms a cyclic convolution on symbols output by said symbol mappercircuit.
 11. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein: while said circuitryoperates in said first of said modes, each of said data-carryingsubcarriers used to transmit said first-mode OFDM symbol has aparticular bandwidth; and while said circuitry operates in said secondof said modes, each of said data-carrying subcarriers used to transmitsaid second-mode OFDM symbol has said particular bandwidth.
 12. Thetransmitter of claim 1, wherein said circuitry is configurable betweensaid first and said second of said modes during operation based onfeedback from a receiving device, channel or other communicationconditions, a network controller, an application layer of saidtransmitter, and/or user input.
 13. The transmitter of claim 1, whereinat least a portion of said circuitry used while said transmitteroperates in said first of said modes is reused while said transmitteroperates in said second of said modes.
 14. The transmitter of claim 1,wherein: a first portion of said circuitry is powered off whileoperating in said first of said modes; and a second portion of saidcircuitry is powered off while operating in said second of said modes.15. The transmitter of claim 1, wherein a limit on an amount ofnon-linear distortion introduced to said first-mode OFDM symbol by saidtransmitter is lower than a limit on an amount of non-linear distortionintroduced to said second-mode OFDM symbol by said transmitter.
 16. Thetransmitter of claim 1, wherein said circuitry is configurable to switchbetween said first of said modes and said second of said modes on aframe-by-frame basis.
 17. A method performed by an electronictransmitter that operates in at least two modes, said method comprising:while said transmitter operates in a first of said modes: generating afirst-mode orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol froma first number of mapped symbols; and transmitting said first-mode OFDMsymbol on a second number of data-carrying subcarriers, said secondnumber being less than said first number; and while said transmitteroperates in a second of said modes: generating a second-mode orthogonalfrequency division multiplexing (OFDM) symbol from a third number ofmapped symbols; and transmitting said second-mode OFDM symbol using afourth number of data-carrying subcarriers, said third number beingequal to or less than said fourth number.
 18. The method of claim 17,wherein said mapped symbols are N-QAM symbols, N being an integer. 19.The method of claim 17, comprising generating said mapped symbols from aforward error correction encoded bitstream.
 20. The method of claim 17,comprising: while said transmitter operates in said first of said modes:filtering and decimating said first number of mapped symbols to generatea number of values, said number of values being equal to said secondnumber; and transforming said values to said first-mode OFDM symbol viaan inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT).